Article Archive

System Change or Extinction? Thoughts on “The Uninhabitable Earth”

“There are thus two critiques of “The Uninhabitable Earth.” First, Wallace-Wells fails to account for all the positive environmental actions we’re going to take. But he also ignores the negative political actions that are bound to occur. But something is missing here. These two critiques don’t go well together. It just doesn’t make sense that we could make major reductions in emissions with the same old “vicious right-wing minority” in power. If they’re still in charge and pushing wars, we’re screwed. It seems obvious, but apparently bears repeating: environmental change requires political change. Capitalism fuels environmental devastation. We will only halt environmental devastation if we dismantle capitalism.”

Kurds and supporters gather in Hamburg

From April 15 – 17, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany the Kurdish freedom movement held its third instantiation of Challenging Capitalist Modernity, the biennial conference dedicated to ‘democratic modernity’ and the ideas developed by imprisoned Kurdish political leader Abdullah Ocalan.

On the first day, over 1,200 activists, scholars, and students packed into a vast lecture hall, the University of Hamburg’s Audimax, with seven interpreter booths and two balconies. Outside, blossoming trees and vivid new grass lined the walkways, [...]

Beyond the Limits of Nature: A social-ecological view of growth and degrowth

ISE board member Eleanor Finley has a new article titled Beyond the Limits of Nature: A social-ecological view of growth and degrowth. Part of the series Ecology after capitalism, it draws on Bookchin’s work to interrogate the limits of the degrowth perspective and contrasts it with social ecology’s analysis of post-scarcity and ecological development.

Accelerationism… and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows

ISE affiliate Aaron Vansintjan has written an engaging article that analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of two of the most widely discussed political tendencies on the left today, Accelerationism and Degrowth, exploring their political priorities, vision, and blind spots.

“Bookchin and Marx;” Reid Kotlas from the 2016 Annual Gathering

We are happy to present “Bookchin and Marx,” a paper delivered at this year’s ISE annual gathering by Reid Kotlas, a member of the Platypus Affiliated Society. Platypus is an international project “for the self-criticism, self-education, and, ultimately, the practical reconstitution of a Marxian Left” which hosts reading groups and publishes the journal The Platypus Review. In recent years Platypus has initiated a critical engagement with the ideas of Social Ecology, and have invited ISE faculty members to participate in their annual gathering on multiple occasions. Kotlas’ presentation kicked off a lively discussion of Bookchin’s indebtedness to, [...]

Enroll Now – New Flexible Online Course!

Our first online course Ecology, Democracy, Utopia was a great success! In response to high demand we are now offering a self-directed course featuring the same video lectures, readings, and discussion forums but without the fixed time commitment of a weekly seminar. This allows for more flexible participation; you can start the course at any time, at your own speed, and according to your own schedule.

"In November 2016, U.S. leftists will be offered up a blue and red pill provided by the matrix of our own failing democracy. Candidate #1 (let’s call this the blue pill) will be deemed the lesser of two evils, the greater of which is candidate #2 (the red pill). But what if, after responsibly choosing the pill determined to be less evil (an act of damage control), leftists then set their sights on going off their meds—that is, what if they aimed to leave the state matrix altogether? Local communalist politics, such as those outlined by Murray Bookchin’s theory of social ecology, beckon to leftists and offer a way to transcend the state by creating a confederation of directly democratic communities."

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The Symbiosis Research Collective will be speaking at the ISE Annual Gathering this weekend - read their excellent prize-winning article Community, Democracy, and Mutual Aid here:

"Our aim in this essay is to channel our struggles against oppression and domination into a strategic approach toward building real utopias—to transform the poetry of Occupy into the prose of real social change. Both concrete and comprehensive, our proposal is to organize practical community institutions ofparticipatory democracy and mutual aid that can take root, grow, and gradually supplant the institutions that now rule ordinary people’s lives.

This next system we imagine is a libertarian ecosocialism grounded in the direct participation of citizens rather than the unaccountable authority of elites; in the social ownership of the economy rather than exploitation; in the equality of human beings rather than the social hierarchies of race, gender, nationality, and class; in the defense of our common home and its nonhuman inhabitants rather than unfettered environmental destruction; and in the restoration of community rather than isolation. Above all else, our aim is to lay out a framework forcrafting such a society from the ground up—to, as the Wobblies declared, build the new world in the shell of the old." ... See MoreSee Less

Our first online course Ecology, Democracy, Utopia was a great success! In response to high demand we are now offering a self-directed course featuring the same video lectures, readings, and discussion forums but without the fixed time commitment of a weekly seminar. This allows for more flexible pa...

"Bookchin was an advocate of an eclectic form of environmentalist anti-capitalism. In "Ecology of Freedom" (1982), he argued that man’s destruction of the environment is the result of his domination of other men, and only by doing away with all hierarchies – man over woman, old over young, white over black, rich over poor – could humanity avert ecological and economic collapse. In "The Rise of Urbanisation and the Decline of Citizenship" (1987) and "Urbanisation without Cities" (1992), he proposed "libertarian municipalism" as an alternative to representative democracy and authoritarian state-socialism: directly democratic assemblies would confederate into larger networks and eventually topple state power. His 24 published books had earned him admirers such as Grace Paley, Noam Chomsky and Ursula LeGuin (who based her novel "The Dispossessed" in part on Bookchin’s early work)..." ... See MoreSee Less